Do You Feel What I Feel? The Relation between Affective Congruence and Empathy in Daily Life Social Situations

Theories of empathy highlight the importance of affective congruence, which is the degree to which we match an interaction partner in negative or positive affect. However, no research to date has used a multi-pronged assessment approach necessary to investigate whether and how affective congruence typically relates to empathy (i.e., perception of others’ affect, self-reported affect, and self-reported empathy during interpersonal interactions). Using multilevel response surface analysis and ecological momentary assessment, we investigated relations between affective congruence and empathy during social interactions in a large sample of adults (N=526; total interactions=21,521; median=38 interactions per person). We found that while empathy is generally higher when there is affective congruence, empathy is highest when there is congruence in high positive affect. Further, people are least empathetic when they feel emotionally worse than they perceive the other person is feeling. These findings provide novel insights into the empathic processes.